University President Sally Mason said Wednesday that the university beat out Harvard and Princeton to land Leach, who stepped down last month as President Obama’s chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Mason said Leach will become a visiting professor of law. She said he will work with the school’s center on human rights, give special campus lectures on foreign policy and other issues, and teach courses on American government and the legislative process.

Leach, a Davenport native, represented Iowa in congress for 30 years until he was defeated for re-election in 2006 in an anti-Republican wave. He had chaired the House committees on banking and international relations.